The Dead are Gods: A Memoir by Eirinie Carson

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From the back cover:

The news comes in an early morning phone call: Eirinie Carson learns that her best friend Larissa is dead. Stunned, Eirinie attempts to make sense of the events leading up to Larissa's death--and uncovers startling secrets about her friend in the process.

Both Black models, they'd lived together in London from their mid-teens till their mid-twenties.  They shared their formative years navigation the predominantly white spaces of fashion, as well as London's rock and roll scene.  As Eirinie puts it, Larissa "held my hand through so much, she taught me about my Blackness and the space I should be taking up in this world. The loss of her was profound, devastating, and at times maddening."

The Dead are Gods is striking, intimate, and profoundly moving depiction of life after a sudden loss.  Amid navigating moments of intense grief, Eirinie finds power in pulling moments of joy from the depths of her emotion, and her portrayal of what love feels like after death bursts from the page alongside a timely, honest, and personal exploration of Black love and Black life.

Perhaps, Eirinie proposes, "The only way out is through."

Eirinie Carson is a Black British writer, born to a Jamaican father and Scottish mother and raised in southeast London.  Her work is published in the Sonora Review and she is a frequents contributor to Mother magazine.  A member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, Eirinie lives in Northern California with her musician husband and their one dog and two daughters. The Dead are Gods is her first book.